This invention refers to a device for the cleaning and drying of rotating belts or mats used in sorting machines for the carrying and unloading of items to be sorted.
The industrial sorting machine sector has in recent years witnessed the diffusion of high-technology sorting machines, in which the items are placed on a mobile trolley moving along a fixed path and equipped with a rotating endless mat (belt), which constitutes a carrying and unloading plane for the items and is actuated so as to move in a direction perpendicular to that of the trolley's forward motion and to unload the carried item whenever the latter reaches a pre-established collecting station.
These machines have attained a high degree of sophistication, to the point that the items are loaded onto the machine as it passes by at high speed. Their position on the mat is precisely adjusted, and their unloading trajectory is calculated based on: their mass, the forward speed of the machine and the mat's own friction coefficient, so as to achieve the unloading of the item with the greatest precision, while still maintaining a high forward speed of the trolleys.
The precision of the trajectories imparted to the items during the unloading process is of fundamental relevance for the proper operation of the apparatus. As mentioned, this precision also depends on the friction coefficient of the material constituting the mats.
During operation it happens, however, that the surface of these mats fouls up or turns shiny, with a consequent change of the friction coefficient which tends to reduce the characteristics of a precision handling of the items, for instance due to a slipping phenomena which impairs the reliability of the loading and unloading operations.
This makes it necessary to periodically attend to a cleaning of the mats by a washing operation, which is currently effected by hand, by shutting down the facility and individually cleaning the mats on each trolley.
As can be easily seen, this is an extremely expensive operation, in particular if one considers that these fixtures are frequently equipped with several hundreds of trolleys, and that the necessary cleaning operations therefore demand a machine outage of several hours.
The purpose of this invention is to offer a solution for the mentioned problem.